idols rather than curse words. As a kid, Willa would tell me, “I’ll know I’ve made it when people start taking my name in vain.”
“I’m just so tired and I don’t want to say something I’ll regret,” she says. “I want to get home and talk to my mom about what happened tonight, before she hears it from someone else and I’m in thirty more kinds of trouble that I didn’t call her and that I was with those kids.” Willa’s mother is our school’s principal; Principal Owen is not so affectionately called Gant High’s P.O., as in parole officer. Although I’ve convinced Willa to hang out with the core a bunch this summer, Willa is increasingly worried that her mom is going to realize just how much time she’s spending with the kids P.O. refers to as “fast.” It’s probably only because we have so many years built up of never getting into trouble that Willa’s been able to fly under the radar the last four weeks.
My wanting to go to parties and Willa’s reluctance and sometimes refusal to go hasn’t caused a rift between us, because although Willa and I have been bests since the sixth grade, we were never the kind of inseparable girls who did each other’s pedicures and shared a sleeping bag. Plus, I had Ben.
When we were younger, Ben and I invited Willa on adventures. P.O. rarely let her come, because Dad and Diane weren’t there to supervise. Supervision was always a big deal for Willa’s mom and not a priority at the McBrook house.
“Willa—”
“Tomorrow.” She gives me a grave sideways look as the Prius glides soundlessly up the driveway. I add wait-until-tomorrow to the wait-and-see of earlier. Their comfort and optimistic promise carry me into my house. Basel, Ben’s tabby cat, meets me at the front door and runs figure eights around my ankles as I double- and then triple-check that I’ve set the house alarm.
Although she’s the last person I want to think about as I get ready for bed, I can’t stop seeing Maggie’s glowing figure on the dark rocks of the spring. In death she looked like the powerful villain I knew she was.
During those twenty-eight days when I let sadness swallow me up, I also let guilt in. How hadn’t I seen what Maggie was capable of? I’d thought she was ordinary, nothing more than an alternative girl who liked thinking she was original but was actually a cliché. She wore safety pins in her ears rather than earrings. She had mostly wannabe-hippie friends, and when she wasn’t with Ben, she hung out with the kids who thought they were all political and enlightened because they wore hemp jewelry and ate pot brownies at reggae shows in the city. She scribbled all over her clothing in Wite-Out and Sharpie: M + B, or MAGGIE MCBROOK, or B+M 4EVER. She wasn’t subtle.
Ben was the first boyfriend she kept longer than a few months. Before him she’d mostly dated older guys, the kind who hung out in their cars behind the school tennis courts, waiting to sell kids substances in paper bags. Maggie’s exploits were the kind that pinched-nose cheerleaders thought were outrageous, even though they weren’t different from what their football-playing boyfriends got up to.
Most of all, Maggie was jealous. If Maggie saw Ben talking to a girl in school, she’d rush up and chase the girl off and then get into a yelling match with Ben. If Maggie suspected Ben was getting texts or calls from girls, his phone would disappear. During their senior year Ben stopped going to parties with Maggie at all because they’d had so many blowups.
I don’t get why Ben put up with it. He’d say, She’s passionate or I don’t mind fighting or She hates Gant as much as I do. That was it. They railed on Gant together. She had an outsider’s perspective too. She could roll her eyes and go on about the beastly waterfront houses. The only difference was that Ben lived in one of them.
Ben and I would glide into the harbor after a day on the Mira and he’d shout, mock emphatically, “Gant, the idyllic island where the millionaires of Seattle flock with their 2.4 kids, labradoodles, and trophy wives. Gant, where shit doesn’t stink and bullshit is recyclable, where everyone gets to be white, rich, and an asshole.” It was theatrical and true.
Ben probably hated himself a little for it. There he was, on the deck of a